Cock Tales.

I remembered, this evening,
When you asked me out for cocktails
In front of everyone,
Two years ago,
And we all blushed in response.
I stared, dumbfounded,
As you gazed back casually.
I said "why not?"

So, instead of going back to Pride,
Where we'd just finished tabling,
We went to Farm,
And drank expensive booze,
And talked about women.
Almost 20 years my senior,
A seasoned queer woman from Chicago,
And I was never more flattered,
And never more regretful of the horrified look I gave them
As we walked out of Boxcar and into the night.

Cache creativity, cache reality.

“To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.”-Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

I'm struggling against my own creativity.

Every day, it is the thought,
"Today, I need to get my shit together."
"Today, I need to write something. Play something."
"Something."

And, every day, it is the feeling,
"I'm so tired."
"I'm so sad."
"I'm so lonely."

I'm very inspired.
And very uninspired.

I'm building a collection.
Always.
The collection changes from day to day.
But I do not forget.
I do not slim down.
I do not erase.

It is a library of thoughts.
Of regrets and empty experiences.
Slipping interests.
Fading words.

Things that inspired individuals in the past
To write words that became great.
Words that held their meanings through the years.
Words that feel like crumbling, permanent pillars
Of our cultural currency.

I think that part of my problem
Is that I believe the expression of these particular emotions and ideas
Is a cliche in itself.
It's been done before, over and over.
It's useless unless it's totally unique.

I don't want my mansion to look like everyone else's.
I want mine to be unique.
Because we all want to be unique.
Special, every one.
Rich and famous, every one.

It'd be a betrayal of myself
To attempt to publish or present
Anything less than something I can totally stand behind.
Irrational, perhaps, but respectable by nature.
I am my own motive. No one, nothing else.

And it is myself that I conceal.
And myself I will present.
Myself that will conquer.
Myself that will survive.

I'm still certain that the best revenge
Is the lack of further acknowledgement of past events.
As much as I would like to tell my own tragedies,
It's best that the people involved are just going to slip into obscurity.
Where they belong.
As I've said before, though,
Tragedy is easier to write about.

I still feel like my throat was slit a month ago,
And I've been bleeding out in a serial killer's basement ever since.
I feel like a living murder victim.

I'm stuck in a limbo I didn't invite.
There are days of anger,
And there are days of sadness.
But, all together, there is a lot of nothingness.

I feel like a ghost,
Becoming increasingly inconsequential and forgotten
While in the prime of my life.

All the witnesses of my past greatness
Are scattered across the world.
And the days in which I was celebrated seem to be fading into a distant past.

The search parties,
Try as they might to find me,
To rescue me,
To bring me home to recover,
Have yet to successfully locate me.

Sometimes I feel as though they've seen
But not comprehended
And perhaps called off the search too soon.

And then there are times when the trapdoor is opened.
And the murder site is returned to.
To put lipstick on slimy lips
Or caress the silken, slipping hair of the many trophies there.

My lifeless eyes linger on those of my killer.
Try as I might to forget how I once saw them
And focus on my own destruction's influence on them
I mourn the loss of what I thought was a growing love.

What instead became a slaughter
That rendered my meat rotting and useless.
Which is something else entirely to mourn.

Pertinent Premonition.

I feel like something's coming, and I don't know what it is.
It's like I'm waiting for an inevitable turn.
Yet another dramatic volta.
There have been so many in the past five years of my life.
It's hard to imagine what the next is.

Rationally, it should be a physical move.
A personal exodus.
To a trendy but perhaps remote location.
Potentially full of people waiting and willing to embrace me in their community.
A place where I'll again have opportunities to become involved in activities I love.
More opportunities for me to display my self-realized abilities to surprise, inspire and conquer.
More opportunities for me to build and rebuild my empire.
To again rise to the top of my networking game.

All this recent bridge-burning business has made me miss meeting people.
Developing useful connections.
Meeting people that present me with opportunities simply for knowing them.
My utilitarian sensibilities are returning, but to what benefit?
Maybe this is the incentive I need to formalize the plans for escape.
There is a cut-throat business woman lurking somewhere in me.
And I have to get to the people I'm supposed to meet.

I still believe in fate.
Purpose.
Happenstance reason.
Surprise.

My karma is demanding its equal in events.
And it's very, very good.
I'm hopeful, to say the least.

Libraries: the new crisis lines.

During a particularly busy stint in the library on Monday, I was answering the business line because I was the first to get to it. The man on the other end reluctantly asked if there was someone on staff that just answered questions. I told him that everyone else was fairly busy at the moment but that I'd be happy to answer his question. He proceeded to ask for a clarification of the definitions of "bisexuality" and "homosexuality," and what the difference between the two was, if any.

I proceeded to calmly explain that bisexuality is the sexual attraction to individuals of both sexes, and homosexuality is the exclusive attraction to individuals of the same sex.

He then asked what it would be if, say, an individual was coerced into performing "certain acts." I calmly explained that sexual orientation is typically a product of the individual's chosen, natural preference, and that such actions would not matter if the coerced individual didn't want them to. He then told me that he'd recently been at a bachelor's party, where his friends had coerced him into performing "certain acts," and that he wasn't sure of what it meant.

I explained that, again, these actions didn't have to mean anything if he didn't want them to. And if he decided that he enjoyed these actions, he was free to explore more of those actions and then make a decision from there. But that, again, if he didn't want to be described in a new way, that he didn't have to be, because it was his choice as to whether or not these actions would redefine his identity.

He thanked me before saying goodbye, and sounded like he felt better.

A coworker joked that perhaps he'd called the grocery store before that, and I couldn't stop laughing.

But I generally feel really good about what I said.

Mud.

Tonight I got the first ride in in months.
Ten miles.
It felt easy.
Balmy air makes all the difference.
We rode down the muddy trails.
Through the floodlands.
Past everyone else who felt the need to feel alive.
It was a hard winter, after all.
My dad could only listen.
As I discussed my current thoughts.
The texts.
The bad night of sleep.
Being late to work because I slept through my alarm.
The karmic sadness and frustration I feel because of it.
I was still swollen from crying when I woke up.
Today is the first day my face has felt normal in about four.

We returned covered in dirt.
But I felt cleaner.